Miyamoto: Link not cool, Stories don’t match, & Large role for Zelda in SS

In the Latest Iwata Asks, we get some red meat thrown to us from Miyamoto:

Princess Zelda ‘pretty good’ in Skyward Sword

After starring as a playable character in Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, could Princess Zelda have another big role in Skyward Sword? Shigeru Miyamoto has teased fans by saying that she will be:

“pretty good.”

I never wanted Link to look cool

Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed his reason behind including young Link in The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. It’s because he didn’t want Link to be just another cool hero.

“Link is a boy. In the first game, The Legend of Zelda, he was about 12 years old. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, he was about 16, but I never wanted to make him just another cool hero. Until The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link was a playful and childish character. I had worked on all the games since the first one, and I thought that if we made him too cool, he wouldn’t be Link any more.”

“On the other hand, I did want Link to be somewhat cool, so we decided to have both adult and young Link. He doesn’t just grow from the point of view of stats – as in an RPG – but actually grows up in appearance. When we did that, then all sorts of ideas bubbled up.”

“When we decided to handle Link growing up from a 9-year-old child to a more mature 16-year-old, I wanted lots of characters to fulfil various roles. For example, Kaepora Gaebora is a grandfather figure who gives Link all kinds of advice and looks out for him. And since Link is a boy, I wanted girls besides Princess Zelda to show up.”

Zelda stories ‘may not match up’

“The stories in The Legend of Zelda may not match up as the series progresses,” said Miyamoto. “We actually expend a lot of time trying to make them match up, though. It would make things a lot easier if the players said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t really matter.’ (laughs)

“Even though the setting was different each time, the characters you knew and loved would come out and perform. Well, the Mario games are set up like that. It would be much easier if we could use any setting in The Legend of Zelda while preserving the essential relationship between Link, Ganon and Zelda.”

Yet Miyamoto concedes that Nintendo worked hard on the story of Ocarina Of Time and perhaps that’s why it resonates with so many gamers.

“When it comes to a story of the Zelda games, we can’t do anything disappointing, so with the Ocarina of Time, we worked on the story with reference to the past games in the series,” he said.